the_mysterious_mr_enterfandomcom-20200214-history
Happy.
On June 13th, the Growing Around novel had 8,000 words, and this was after about two months of writing. On July 10th, the first draft of the novel was finished with 62.3k words. To put this in perspective, the first draft of my Little Cassie novel was finished after... three years, and it totaled about 41k words at the end of it. Over this period of time when I wasn't struggling with Norm of the North, I'd been going through some changes and new experiences of my own... which allowed me to get... much farther than ever before. Now, I'm not done yet. Not by a long shot. I am going to need to rewrite this novel a bunch. I already know that I really need to edit up the first chapter, and make it much more apparent what the story really is. Maybe have Sally interact more with Robert before she goes at it with Linda, and I should move the story about the moon landing to the first chapter because it strongly makes apparent the tone and the type of story that Growing Around ''is. The prose needs a ton of work. Some characters drop out of the book for long lengths of time. The moral/themes need to be strengthened. And the ending... needs work. It's got the ideas that I want, but I need to convey them better. I personally don't think that I stuck the landing very well. Also, I'm removing the prologue. It's too detached for what I'm going for. But I'm still invigorated. I still have a lot of determination left in me, and I want this book to be the best possible thing I can make it, and make it a series. For everything I put into the first novel, there are many more ideas and concepts that I'd definitely like to explore. Maybe before all of that though I'll make a writing tips on "How to Finish a Project," although there isn't really much advice I can give. Here are some tips: * Do not wait for inspiration. Write until you get inspired. Writing is a self-sustaining kind of thing. The more that you do it, the more that you'll want to do it. * You're going to come to points where you feel stilted and every word you're writing is coming out crap. Keep going. * Learn to be honest with yourself. Admit when you could have been writing, but weren't. Maybe you decided to play a game, or boredly browsed the internet. One thing that I've done to help fight my own procrastination is, when I catch myself just boredly browsing the internet or playing a game, I ask myself "Why am I ''not writing right now" Sometimes there's an answer - I'm tired, hungry, whatever. But more often than not, there really isn't an answer, and it helps me motivate myself to keep working. There's also been the whole "I'm paranoid of dying and never finishing all of my projects, and not leaving behind anything" which... has been a double edged sword. It's kept me working smoothly and efficiently. It's also left me wide awake, fighting sleep deprivation, exhaustion, paranoia, and hypochondria. Also, the Undertale soundtrack. The Undertale soundtrack and the fan songs behind it have really helped me get through it. Pretty much every action scene, I was listening to "ASGORE". I get that this isn't... the healthiest way of doing things. It's like if you were an arachnophobe, you bought a pet tarantula and forced yourself to touch it if you didn't write 3,000 words every day. And you kept the thing in the corner, just constantly looming at you. Staring at you. Not the healthiest, but it is the most efficient way of getting you to actually do something. But why I have been so determined with this project in particular? I mean, I couldn't manage to get this surge of productivity with anything else that I've worked on. From Little Cassie to Young Commando, everything else either fizzled out or just straight up died. I mean, my second place project Little Cassie - I needed to change the genre within it twice to get to the end of the first draft. Here... I made it to the end and I want to keep going. Maybe this is what I should have been doing all along, but... on the other hand, this is something... that's really important to me. I won't say the exact reasons why... although in a sequel, I can make that much more clear, but I will say that I put a lot of myself into this project (beyond time & effort), and working on it helped me meet some of the best people ever. And as such, I've been very protective of the project as a whole. I mean, much (not all, but a good brunt of it) of the criticism has boiled down to... this world can't possibly exist. Which is the definition of fantasy, and no one has really been able to give me an articulate explanation to why I can't have a story where kids rule the world when other stories have things like magical schools or faster than light travel or hypnosis books or giant monsters that small kids capture and use them to fight. You know, without making the story extremely gritty. And from the start, I specifically wanted to avoid gritty. Because that's cliche as fuck, when dealing with the "teenage wasteland" trope. You want this story done as "realistically" as possible, I'd recommend that you buy the tabletop RPG Kidworld. If you want a gritty Growing Around, it already exists. Everything from Lord of the Flies to The Tribe. (I did my research) You know, I didn't just want to write another Children of the Corn or Lord of the Flies. People seemed to expect me to write something as complex as Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I never wanted to do that, and I was never pretentious enough to think that I could do something like that. I'm not someone like Nolan. I write things that are much more low-key, relatively simple plots. But more importantly, I like to write optimistically. And this work belongs much more on the ideal end of the spectrum Although, I think I've been finding a better way to deal with that criticism - by taking the series even further from reality and making it more unrealistic. I started with making the town hall an impossibly large tree, and went to making the moon landing about some extravagant prank within the context of the story. Being unrealistic... is sometimes the point; I'd hate to play an uber-rule Pokemon game. accurate Pokemon. The book, for the most part, is going to stay very lighthearted, and I'd like to assume that I kind of know what I'm doing. In fantasy, we don't ask "can elves exist" we just go on the assumption that they do. This story doesn't ask "can kids run the world" it just goes on the assumption that they do. As long as the story is internally consistent (reality says that something should be C, but the story says that it should be A, as long as it ends up being A, the work is internally consistent), there shouldn't be a problem. And maybe something in my story isn't internally consistent, but when it comes to the actual subject matter, I think that I'm doing good. And I've said all that I can say on this matter. I'm afraid that we'll just have to agree to disagree if this point continues. But other than that, I've been appreciative of the feedback. Whether it be spelling or grammar mistakes (which anyone makes in a novel), or problems with the actual plot, or characterization issues. And if you do have any criticism/commentary on the series, now would probably be the best time to give it. The basic premise of the novel is that it's a coming-of-age-story in a world where kids literally rule. We follow Sally Dunn as she grows as a person on her quest to become the mayor of her own town of Summerway. She starts out very immature and ends up getting in way over her head, meeting new friends and enemies along the way as her life radically changes. The first draft can be located here: Growing Around Novel - Chapter 1 Category:Miscellaneous